Waching daily Sep 1 2017

Trump Says He Will Not Talk to North Korea. Experts Fear He Will.

Trump Says He Will Not Talk to North Korea. Experts Fear He Will. WASHINGTON — President Trump vowed on Wednesday that he would not talk to Kim Jong-un, cooling off what has become his on-again, off-again cultivation of North Korea's rogue dictator.

But if Mr Trump's tweet, in which he said, "talking is not the answer!," seemed to reignite tensions with North Korea, it also revealed a paradox in how Asia experts view the crisis.

Some fear less that Mr Trump is going to start a war with Mr Kim than that he is going to stumble into a risky, unpredictable dialogue with him.

The world's attention has understandably focused on Mr Trump's saber-rattling threats against Mr Kim — most dramatically, his promise to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea if Mr Kim fired ballistic missiles at United States territory.

But a meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Kim, these experts said, could open the door to ratifying North Korea's nuclear status or scaling back America's joint military exercises with South Korea.

That could sunder American alliances with Japan and South Korea and play to the benefit of China, which has long advocated direct dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang.

"What the North Koreans are angling for is to bring the danger and tension to a crescendo, and then to pivot to a peace proposal," said Daniel R.

Russel, who served until March as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs. "All of this is focused on pressuring the U.S. to enter direct talks with Kim on his terms. That is the big trap.".

Previous presidents avoided that trap, Mr Russel said, even if Bill Clinton briefly contemplated meeting Mr Kim's father, Kim Jong-il. But Mr Trump brings a deal-maker's swagger to the North Korea issue that his predecessors did not.

He has in the past expressed a willingness to sit across a table from the willful young scion of North Korea's ruling family. "I would speak to him," Mr Trump said during the presidential campaign.

"I would have no problem speaking to him." Last April, he said, "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely; I would be honored to do it." While the Pentagon has drawn up options for a military strike on the North, officials concede it would be all but impossible, given the retaliation it would provoke and the calamitous casualties that would result.

Bannon, Mr Trump's former chief strategist, reflected that internal consensus when he told The American Prospect, "There's no military solution. Forget it." That leaves diplomacy, which Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and other officials have made clear is still the administration's preferred course.

If North Korea curbs its behavior, Mr Tillerson said recently, there is a "pathway to sometime in the early future having some dialogue." Hours after Mr Trump ruled out talks on Twitter, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis contradicted him.

"We're never out of diplomatic solutions," he told reporters. In Geneva, Robert A.

Wood, the American ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said the United States remained open to dialogue. "We do not seek to be a threat to the Kim Jong-un regime," he said.

Trying to explain Mr Trump's tweet, Mr Wood, who was once the State Department's acting spokesman, said, "What the president is saying is that he doesn't see talking as solving this problem and part of the reason is that the North is not interested in dialogue." Indeed, Mr Trump's sudden hostility to talks appeared to be less a reversal of his previous statements than an expression of frustration with Mr Kim's continued belligerence.

Days after Mr Trump praised him for his newfound restraint, Mr Kim lobbed a missile over Japan. For now, a Trump-Kim summit remains a far-fetched notion.

Even if North Korea was interested in speaking to the United States, its string of belligerent actions — not to mention the June death of Otto F.

Warmbier, the Ohio college student held for nearly 18 months in Pyongyang — would make a meeting politically untenable for Mr Trump. In his tweet, the president declared, "The U.S.

has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years." While Mr Trump's precise meaning was unclear, he seemed to be referring to the promises of fuel oil, nuclear-power reactors, humanitarian aid and the lifting of sanctions that accompanied previous diplomatic negotiations.

Mr Trump, experts said, is correct that talks with North Korea — whether conducted by Democratic or Republican administrations — have been costly and unproductive.

And with the North Koreans now capable, by some estimates, of producing an atomic bomb every sixth or seventh week, the cost of reaching any new agreement would be even higher.

"We're long past the point where we can fob them off with a few light-water reactors," said Michael Auslin, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, who argued in an essay in Politico Magazine this week that Mr Trump should shun negotiations in favor of a policy of explicitly deterring and containing a nuclear North Korea.

Other experts said it was not diplomacy itself that was problematic — particularly if the United States negotiated, along with its allies and China — but that Mr Trump, acting alone, could be an unpredictable negotiator.

"Trump is not the first president to think he can make a deal with these guys," said Mr Auslin. "Bill Clinton thought he was the great negotiator.

His aides thought if they could get him in a room with Kim Jong-il, they could seal a deal.

There's clearly a sense, because of the capriciousness of Trump and the 'Art of the Deal,' that he could do the same." Mr Trump's tweet could be interpreted as a negotiating tactic.

But experts said he was not helping his case with his wildly divergent statements about Mr Kim. Last Tuesday, at a rally in Phoenix, Mr Trump said, "I respect the fact that I believe he is starting to respect us.

I respect that fact very much." Further complicating the administration's approach is its weak diplomatic bench.

It still has not named an assistant secretary for East Asian affairs and no ambassador is in Seoul, although the White House is close to nominating Victor D. Cha, a veteran of the George W.

Bush administration and well-regarded North Korea expert at Georgetown University.

Some experts said they took comfort from the fact that in any summit meeting, the North Koreans would never allow the Americans to determine either the setting or the terms of the negotiation.

For a deal maker and showman like Mr Trump, that would probably be unacceptable. "I suspect that in the end, the president might fall back on his event-planning background," said Michael J.

Green, who served as a top Asia adviser to Mr Bush. "This is not a Miss Universe pageant or a pro wrestling match, so that might stop Trump in his tracks.".

For more infomation >> WWIII is Comming! Trump Says He Will Not Talk to North Korea. Experts Fear He Will. - Duration: 10:01.

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Isil leader reported dead is 'on the run and may take years to capture' - Duration: 5:22.

Isil leader reported dead is 'on the run and may take years to capture'

Isil leader reported dead is on the run and may take years to capture.

Reports of Isil leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis death at the weekend were greatly exaggerated and even though he is on the run, it may take years to capture or kill him, officials and experts said.

Isil fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the groups territory, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and officials say Baghdadi is steering clear of both, hiding in thousands of square km of desert between the two.

In the end, he will either be killed or captured, he will not be able to remain underground forever, said Lahur Talabany, the head of counter-terrorism at the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

But this is a few years away still, he said.

One of Baghdadis main concerns is to ensure those around him do not betray him for the $25m (€22.3m) reward offered by the United States to bring him to justice, said Hisham al-Hashimi, who advises Middle East governments on Isil affairs.

With no land to rule openly, he can no longer claim the title caliph, he said.

He is a man on the run and the number of his supporters is shrinking as they lose territory. Iraqi forces have retaken much of Mosul, the northern Iraqi city the hardline group seized in June 2014 and from which Baghdadi declared himself caliph shortly after.

Raqqa, his capital in Syria, is nearly surrounded by a coalition of Syrian Kurdish and Arab groups.

Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is a 46-year-old Iraqi who broke away from al-Qaida in 2013, two years after the capture and killing of the groups leader Osama bin Laden.

He grew up in a religious family, studied Islamic Theology in Baghdad and joined the Salaafi jihadist insurgency in 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

He was caught by the Americans who released him about a year later as they considered him then as a civilian rather than a military target.

He is shy and reserved, Mr Hashimi said, and has recently stuck to the sparsely populated Iraq-Syria border where drones and strangers are easy to spot.

The [$25m] reward creates worry and tension, it restricts his movements and limits the number of his guards, said Fadhel Abu Ragheef, a Baghdad-based expert on extremist groups.

He doesnt stay more than 72 hours in any one place. Baghdadi has become nervous and very careful in his movements, said Mr Talabany.

His circle of trust has become even smaller. His last recorded speech was issued in November, two weeks after the start of the Mosul battle, when he urged his followers to fight the unbelievers and make their blood flow as rivers.

US and Iraqi officials believe he has left operational commanders behind with diehard followers to fight the battles of Mosul and Raqqa, to focus on his own survival.

The US government has a joint task force to track down Baghdadi which includes special operations forces, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. It will take more than that to erase his influence, Mr Talabany said.

He is still considered the leader of Isil and many continue to fight for him; that hasnt changed drastically, he said. Even if killed or captured, he added, his legacy and that of Isil will endure unless radical extremism is tackled.